2022 round-up: The Big One

[yiskah]

Big ol' 2022 round-up, perhaps sliiiiightly shorter than previous years but not by much. Under a cut because I care about your screens <3

This is what I did for:

New year: Clare and I were in Aviemore for a few days. On new year’s eve we went for a festive trip on the Strathspey Steam Railway, and then that evening we had an extensive fancy dinner at the Rowan Tree, which included an unexpected quiz that we well and truly lost (the following day I found our scoring sheet in the car and realised that I had added it up wrongly and we’d actually scored ten points more than I’d thought, but we still wouldn’t have won, so fine). We left around 11 and decided to drive somewhere we could maybe see fireworks, and so we ended up on the shores of Loch Morlich where little collections of fireworks were going off in different places. And then we went back to the Youth Hostel where we were staying, and had an extensive fashion shoot in our fancy dresses in one of the showers.

Birthday: I was in Romania, and work had asked me to facilitate a workshop, so it was fairly low-key until the very end of the day, when the redoubtable Gabriela, CEO of Save the Children Romania, wheeled in an enormous tray of prosecco and cakes and a bouquet for me, which was very sweet. And then I went for lengthy drinks with some colleagues down by the river. Very pleasant day. I turned 44.

Christmas: At my parents’ place in Monmouth again. On the afternoon of Christmas Day we went over to my aunt’s and had a few hours of Christmas dinner with her and my cousin and her family, who have recently moved back from Australia. One of the unexpected highlights was hanging out with her kids, who are six, four and two and who I’d never met before: I tend to get nervous around kids but in the event we hit it off, particularly the oldest. My mum had been in charge of providing canapés but there had been some confusion about timings, meaning that we showed up late and the canapés were skipped, so when we came back home we had a late canapé dinner, which was so nice that I don’t know why more meals don’t do it like that.

Employment status: New job new job! I spent January and February finishing up with LWF in Myanmar; I wish I had been able to end things on a better note but sadly the situation in Myanmar has been getting worse and worse, international funding has been drying up, and by the time I left we had cobbled together enough funding from various sources to keep our core programming going (i.e. basic education in Rohingya IDP camps, without which these kids would have no access to education whatsoever), but didn’t have any reliable source of medium-term ongoing funding – and also, in my actual final week, one of my direct reports was arrested under Law 505 and has since been sentenced to three years in prison (and shortly afterwards one of my other colleagues was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment, I cannot even really bring myself to think about it too hard because it is fucking heartbreaking).

 

Well that was a downer. I then took March off and went to Madagascar, and then started my new job with Save the Children in April! When I was doing my update at the end of 2021 I said that this job was pretty much my ideal next step, and I am happy to say that the job has lived up to my expectations. Last year I said that I would spend about 50% of my time deployed, which turned out to be a dramatic underestimation: since I started on 1 April, I have only had two days when I was not deployed, on training, or on leave. From 10 April until 9 September I was deployed to Romania as part of the Ukraine response (it was initially supposed to be until the end of June, but it was extended); on my second-last day of that deployment I was put forward for Lebanon, and then I started that the day after I got back from leave. It is quite gratifying to be so much in demand, and even more gratifying that I am currently deployed to the grade above my actual grade; it is significantly less gratifying that I am not paid at that level, and one of my key aims for 2023 is to get promoted as soon as I can: according to the rules, to get promoted within the Humanitarian Surge Team, you have to be deployed twice at the higher grade and not fuck it up, BUT five months is an unusually long deployment so I feel like I should get credit for that. (As a general point, I do find it irritating that so many organisations have the policy that you need to be acting at a higher level without being paid for it before you are formally promoted, and it’s disappointing that NGOs do this as well as the private sector.)

 

In general, I do think that this job is an unusually good fit for me. I absolutely love that I get both breadth and depth of experience; it’s like a combination of your standard long-term NGO role with being a consultant. I am learning so, so much and getting such a variety of experience. And, let me be honest, I am really fucking good at it: I LOVE the challenge of being thrown into a new country, office, situation etc. and just having to figure it out from Day One. On the other hand it can be immensely stressful – in particular, the Lebanon role is extremely full-on, the workload is ridiculous, plus there has been 100% staff turnover on the education tech side and I have been covering two+ full-time jobs for the past couple of months. This time last year I said “I know that Save will be enraging, but at least they will be a different flavour of enraging” – and that is true; it is by far the biggest organisation that I have ever worked for and that has its advantages and its disadvantages; there is an immense wealth of talent and expertise within the organisation and as an education specialist I’m going to learn more from SCI than from pretty much any organisation (with the possible exception of UNICEF, but *spit*); but it is also a very complicated behemoth of a structure, often enragingly fragmented. It’s actually quite nice to come in as an external person as I’m much more able to be like: wait, but WHY do we do it like that – as there are so many Save lifers who are like: dunno, we have never questioned it.

 

Anyway. My contract is two years extendable; I am definitely going to stay two years and probably longer, if I get promoted. Meanwhile I am having a lot of Thoughts about what I want to do in the medium-term – once I am promoted, that’s as high as I can reasonably go within SCI without losing the tech specialism (aside from the very senior roles); otoh it has become clear since I’ve been in this job that I am quite operationally-minded for a technical specialist and I don’t know if I necessarily have the sort of rarefied academic thinking that the really high-level tech advisers are expected to have. So, who knows? Programmes management, consultancy, a more senior edu role in a smaller org? OF COURSE I do not need to think about it now but that’s just the way that my stupid brain works.

Creative output: I continue to write every day and make gradual progress across a load of things. The first book in my YA trilogy is 100% finished; the second one is a complete non-final draft; and my third one is my focus at the moment, currently standing at 80k words – once I’ve finished that I’m going to work on the final drafts of 2 and 3 simultaneously as the plots are very closely interlinked. Maybe I will get everything 100% done in 2023?

 

I continue to tinker with the new idea that started as NaNo 2020, which stands just under 170k across, maybe, two interlinked trilogies, ffs, why am I like this. And I wrote 50k during NaNo this year on a new project, working title Ghost Murder Lesbians, as it’s good to remind myself that I can create new things and not just keep redrafting older work.

 

I have done next to nothing about sending any stuff out to agents, because I am good at the actual WRITING part of writing, while being very very bad at all the other bits that Being A Writer involves. Sigh.

 

Annnnndddd of course I actually published my third novel this year, After Silence! As I wrote last year, I’d long since given up on this one seeing the light of day, and it’s been a mostly-delightful but occasionally-destabilising experience. Being published through a micropress, one has to keep one’s expectations modest, though Deixis has done a fantastic job of promoting the book and, rather gratifyingly, they sold out of hardcopies before Christmas. I realise that this book is not everyone’s cup of tea because it is very long and about a very bleak period of history, but it has been very well-received, which is a constant lovely surprise for me. In particular, Alan Actual Moore called it “a symphonic masterpiece”, which is something that I will never ever get over as long as I live.

 

Singing: I went to a folk singing workshop at the Pianodrome in Edinburgh during the Fringe, which was really lovely. AND the Unthanks singing weekends have been rescheduled for next year, and I have tickets for one at the end of June or the start of July, cannot remember exactly! I am VERY happy about this and just need to hope for the best that I am not deployed somewhere inaccessible during that time.

 

Other creative stuff: I would like to draw more, but then I always say that, and it is conceivable that the hours in the day are finite and I already have a lot of things with which to fill them. I have a tendency to compare my creative output across domains with that of full-time writers whereas in fact I have a pretty intense day job that has me working 40-50 hours a week so I am, possibly, already doing quite a lot?

Learning: Clare and I were soooooo close to finishing the A-level bio course, and then just … didn’t, at any point, over the course of the year, which is partly the fault of work busyness (particularly Clare’s, as she has been in a whole variety of timezones) but also the fault of laziness. Happily we will be on BOATS for a long time in 2023 and hopefully that will motivate us to finish, though I am worried that I’ve basically forgotten everything I ever learned at this point.

 

Once again I have kept up my Duolingo streak and utterly ludicrously added two more languages to the mix, so I’m doing Gaelic, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Ukrainian and Romanian. I’ve technically finished the Gaelic, Russian and Arabic courses but I do a bit of daily practice anyway.

 

Not really learning, but it doesn’t fit neatly anywhere else: this year I started doing Learned League, and I have enjoyed it so, so much more than I’d thought I would! The entire Triv crew are in it now, along with some others: Clare enticed me in by reading me the questions (after she’d answered them, of course, NO CHEATING) when we were on holiday together, and then I did the same to Kat when we were on holiday together. No idea if any of the things I’ve learned will stick in my head but I think I am getting better at it.

Financial situation: Once again, a little shakier than I would have liked. My new job pays around the same, or perhaps slightly more than my previous one (hard to keep track, as previous job paid in euros and new job pays in USD), but this time I am taxed at source so it feels like a net loss month by month – plus of course the tax payment for the last year that I was not taxed at source is now due, AND the final payments for the cruises Clare and I are doing in 2023, so I am feeling somewhat depleted. However I am at least due a CoL payment in January, and I am absolutely fucking determined to get promoted in 2023, and I have to keep in mind that in lieu of a pension, new job puts 10% of my salary each year into a “long-term savings account” which I can access when I leave, which is not insignificant.

 

This time last year I proudly announced that I had got an investment for the first time in my life: it was indeed a stocks and shares ISA and I was very pleased with checking it and seeing it go up week on week, and then the war started and I have been watching it tumbling into the abyss, sigh. I continue to pay into it and am considering it a very long-term investment so trying not to fret too much and assuming it will go up again over time.

 

Oh, and obviously the increase in the cost of living in the UK has been pretty painful, particularly energy bills which, for me, have gone up tenfold in the past three months. I am reasonably well-paid and yet I have resolutely not put the heating on since I got home a couple of days ago, my flat is currently 12 degrees, and if I am doing that, I hate to think what people on lower incomes are doing. It’s fucking shameful.

Not being a dick: This time last year, I said: “I continue with my sporadic and scattershot approach to charitable giving”, and I’m afraid that 2022 has been more of the same. I do still want to step up my charitable giving to about 10% of my income, but that’s not going to happen until after the cruises in March/April. I’ve given up on trying to find some sort of volunteering opportunity as there is no way I can make that work with my deployment schedule being as it is. I am so fucking despairing about the state of the UK these days and I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING to try and push things in the right direction but I was talking about this last night with two of my most politically committed friends and we were all equally blank about how to best use our energies these days. It’s so grim.

Family stuff: Ooof. Last year I said “no one died, which is the most important thing”. Unfortunately I can’t say the same about this year, as both of my aunts on my dad’s side died – I didn’t actually know that my aunt Hilary had died until my aunt Bridget died and I saw her obituary, because my family is terrible at communication. They were both well into their nineties so it was hardly unexpected but it means my father is the last one left of his siblings and that is sad. Of course also at nearly 94 my dad is not doing brilliantly himself, and my mum is struggling with it – nothing specifically is wrong, beyond the simple fact of being nearly-94. I have a lot of guilt about being away as much as I am but my career is my career and my life is my life and I don’t really have a clear idea of what are reasonable expectations in this sort of situation: my parents are very decent and never make me feel guilty, and I was able to spend a whole month with them while my mum was having her hip replaced, which should probably assuage the guilt somewhat but doesn’t.

 

In other depressing family news, I found out over Christmas that two of my cousins are contesting my uncle’s will (he died in 2019, not sure why it’s taken this long) and are in a legal battle with my aunt. These sorts of things are super complicated in my family due to everyone having been married millions of times and I fear this is a poor augur for the future and my parents’ wills when the time comes. I am doing my best to persuade my parents to take steps to deal with this but my parents aren’t always the most responsive.

 

Single weirdest family thing that happened this year was my parents being contacted out of the blue by a woman claiming to be the best friend of my sister. I have known for years that my dad fathered a daughter (who’d be about ten years older than me) during an affair, but given that her mother was married at the time I assumed that she might not even know that my father was her father and never expected to hear from her. I had a short call with the friend, who seemed lovely, and we exchanged some photos so I could see what my sister looks like and vice versa, but then I never heard from my sister directly and the situation being as it is, I feel like the ball is very much in her court to contact us, now that there is a channel open. So who knows how this will play out.

 

Relationship stuff: Again, nope! I am going to keep this section in as it’s faintly, faintly conceivable that something may one day happen in this domain, but it does feel vanishingly unlikely, and I am (mostly) extremely unconcerned about it these days. Even the sporadic urge to get back on the apps is fading, thank god. There is still a small part of me that longs for an organic romantic/sexual connection with someone but I absolutely know that that is not something that I can make happen, so there we are.

Friend stuff: My friends remain a goddamn delight. I should probably try and do more in 2023 to see my more far-flung friends, but it is lovely to have a core circle of friends I just know I’m going to see all the time without having to make a load of scheduling efforts. That said, I am aware that one of the rare positive side-effects of COVID was seeing my Glasgow friends all the time, and now I am back to my standard work travel schedule and I’m a little painfully aware that there’s the potential that I will drift somewhat from the group now that I’m not around for weekly hangouts – I know that we will always be close and part of each other’s lives and I am also very grateful for my job and my lifestyle which is very much a thing that I have actively chosen, but it’s undeniably true that it entails some sacrifices when it comes to friendships and relationships. I am ALSO aware that three of my closest female friends in Glasgow, all of whom were single two years ago, are now all in relationships, and that will change things too – again, I don’t think we’re going to become less close as friends, and they’re absolutely not the sorts of people who will insist that their boyfriends have to come with them everywhere, and of course I am happy for them – but, selfishly, it does seem to highlight my solitary state somewhat.

 

In terms of new friendships, my Romania deployment was lovely and social because everyone I worked with was temporarily deployed so we hung out together a lot and I became pretty close to a few of them. Lebanon has been quite different – everyone I work with is absolutely lovely and friendly, but I am the only deployed person, while everyone else is there long-term, which makes a huge difference in terms of opportunities to hang out outside of work. So that has been a useful learning experience, and while I am generally quite happy to have my evenings to myself to write or read or go to yoga classes, at times of stress it would be really nice to just have one or two people unconnected to work that I could go out and have a beer with. So next time I am deployed in a similar situation I need to identify meet-up opportunities early on so that I have some sort of non-work social network.

Living situation: Lovely Glasgow flat, as ever. Mostly on my own, though for the last few months of the year I rented my spare room to Giulia and Luis, friends of Hannah M, who had bought a house in Govan and needed somewhere to stay nearby while they were renovating it. Former-flatmate Angela from Peru also came back for about ten days, as she’s just started a PhD at Glasgow University, and she will be back again for a few months this year. Unfortunately I have to have a serious think about whether this makes sense financially, going forward – I charge friends a pretty low rent as technically they are only renting a room (even though they have the run of the place when I’m away, which is most of the time), but energy prices have gone up so much over the past few months that the rent I charge only juuuuust covers electricity and gas, and if it continues to rise it’ll make more sense to have the place empty rather than having people using electricity and gas, even if they are paying rent. Which seems utterly bonkers but this is fucking austerity Britain I guess.

 

I should perhaps note that 2022 is the year where gentrification has really started to bite in my particular neck of the woods. Fully three out of six of the flats in my building have sold in the past year, two of which had been owned my people who’d been there for years already when I moved in in 2011, and the general shift seems to be from Pakistani-Glaswegian families to white middle class couples from down south. As a white middle class woman from down south myself, I am in no position to complain about this, and I am also well aware that Pakistani-Glaswegian families are not there as smug window-dressing to make me feel more right-on. But I have always loved how varied my neighbourhood is, and it will be a real loss if it becomes more homogeneous. (Though I do think that’s a long way off for the hardcore of Govanhill.) I had a taxi driver a couple of nights ago who, coincidentally, also lives on my street, and he said that the same had happened in his building, so it’s clearly a pattern, and driven by rising house prices – which, as a homeowner, I should apparently feel happy about, but it’s only relevant if I’m going to sell my flat, which I have no intention of doing.

 

I also had a couple of months in a really lovely little studio apartment to the south of downtown Bucharest, and a few months in an airbnb in the Mar Mkhayel area of Beirut, which I will return to in a couple of weeks. Both of these were pleasant surprises as I’d assumed I’d be in hotels long-term most of the time with the new job – I feel like I’m more tolerant of being in hotels than a lot of people are, but it makes it so much easier to feel settled and integrated into a new city when you have an apartment.

 
Travel: YAAAAAAAY TRAVEL. Of course the big disappointment of this year was that Clare’s and my planned trip to Antarctica was cancelled due to COVID AGAIN, but I am starting to believe that it will actually happen in 2023. As a consolation prize we went to Madagascar in March for nearly a full month, and it was bloody brilliant: so much weird wildlife and landscapes and culture and beaches. So good.

 

Then after that I went to Romania for work for a few months, and I got to spend time in parts of the country I’d never been to before: Suceava and Iasi and Galati and Tulcea and Maramures County, as well as fun trips to Brasov and Sinaia. Also went to Moldova again for work. Did a side-trip to Serbia at the start of July to meet Clare in Belgrade and we did a day-trip to the Sargan-8 railway. And then once my Romania deployment was done I took three weeks off: one week in Mykonos with Kat on a yoga retreat, a week on my own in Guatemala (Antigua, Panajachel, Pacaya Volcano, Chichicastenango), and then a week with Clare and Dash in Mexico (Merida, Valladolid, Tulum, Cancun, Holbox). And THEN a new deployment to Lebanon from the start of October until the end of the year – I’d been to Lebanon before but only to Beirut, and now I’ve had the chance to go to Tripoli and Zahle for work and also Tyre and Byblos and Aanjar and Baalbek in my own time.

 

In total, I have been to 11 countries (UK, Netherlands, France – both of which on the way to Madagascar as I bought an absolutely insanely-routed ticket – Madagascar, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Greece, Mexico, Guatemala, Lebanon), three of which were new to me (Madagascar, Mexico, Guatemala).

Health: As ever, robust to the point of rudeness. This was the year that I got COVID for the first time, but it wasn’t that bad: two half-days (non-consecutive) of feeling horribly feverish and achy, and then the rest of the time it was more like a mild cold, plus two subsequent weeks of being more tired than usual (and as a result sleeping solidly each night, which was actually lovely). In most ways the timing could not have been better: I came back to the UK for what was supposed to be a two-week break at the start of July, during which time EVERYONE had COVID, including people who’d never had it before, and it felt inevitable that I would succumb as soon as I got off the plane and ruin my break – but in the event I developed symptoms on the very day I was due back to work (and I’m pretty sure I contracted it on a horribly overcrowded train three days prior). However the downside was a) I was at my parents’ very small house, so had to spend the next few days corralled upstairs as much as possible to avoid (successfully!) giving it to them, and also b) it was the hottest days of the year, close to 40 degrees, which is a really uncomfortable temperature at which to be feverish.

 

Aside from that, I had a single trip to A&E after I managed to open my friend’s car door into my own head, causing a dramatic amount of bleeding, but in the end no stitches were required and I now only have a very small and perhaps slightly rakish scar. Also I got some sort of very unpleasant ear infection in October/November, the first time I’d had anything like that since I was a child, and I’d forgotten how painful it is. Got rid of it thanks to delicious OTC antibiotics in Lebanon but my ears have been intermittently blocked both before and after the infection so I should probably go and have that looked at.

 

In terms of fitness, I aimed to do daily yoga this year and although I missed a handful of days, it was no more than five I think, so that’s nice. In October Kat and I went on a yoga holiday and I was taken aback at how much I enjoyed being back in yoga classes, and how much more enriching and satisfying it is, as well as how much harder I work when there is an instructor and the social pressure of other people who will notice if I e.g. sit out a vinyasa. So in Beirut I found a yoga studio and I’ve been going to ashtanga classes three or four times a week and I looooove it. I really really want this to be a thing that continues into 2023, i.e. really taking yoga seriously, going to classes when I can etc., though I also know that I have a tendency to get into something to an obsessive degree and want to do it ALL THE TIME in a way that’s not sustainable, so let’s see.

 

On the flipside, I have maybe given up on running? I’m not sorry I persisted as long as I did but I never really got much better at it, and now I’ve figured out that yoga can be an intense workout and isn’t just flopping into stretchy poses, I don’t really feel the need to run any more.

General mental state: Mostly good, but during some very stressful work times in November/December my anxiety was so high that I did start to wonder whether it was an actual Thing that warranted some sort of medical intervention. I recognise that work angst affects me like almost nothing else because, probably, my self-concept is unhealthily caught up in work, plus I have all of that tedious ADHD perfectionism/Rejection Sensitivity bullshit going on, yada yada. I am so fucking resistant to thinking of myself as An Anxious Person thanks to childhood conditioning buuuuuut maybe there are things that I could do that would make living in my head easier, who knows.

 

As an aside, part of the reason I’ve been enjoying doing fairly intense yoga classes is because it’s basically the only time my brain shuts tf up. I think I finally get what people mean by yoga being a “moving meditation”.

Weddings attended: None, yet again! Maybe it’s time to remove this category.

Babies born: Bloody hell, maybe none? Perhaps time to remove this category too? Oh no wait, Dani and Timo had baby E!

Best books read: I did a whole separate meme about this, so I will direct you there.

Best TV watched: I’ve binged various things over the course of the year, and right now, shamefully, I am binging My 600lb Life and even signed up to a new streaming service in order to do so, what is WRONG with me. However the TV that will stay with me from 2022 is absolutely definitely Our Flag Means Death, which was such sheer, simple joy that I watched it all the way through twice and then partially a third time, and I was delighted to hear it’s been renewed for a second season. Even just thinking about the fact that it is an unapologetic queer love story between middle-aged people makes me so so happy. It’s the sort of thing that makes vast swathes of TV look regressive in comparison. I have long had a filthy crush on Taika Waititi, and this just cemented that (though a few months later I saw that he was on one of those dreadful Buzzfeed lists of celebs who’d indicated support for Johnny Depp during the trial and I still find that a little upsetting – there’s the downside of parasocial relationships, I guess).

Best films seen: Did I even see anything this year? Genuinely can’t think of anything – oh, aside from an amazing documentary on YouTube that did interviews with Russian families who’d been divided by their different views on the war in Ukraine. It was excellent and made me understand the situation much better, and the extent to which misinformation has poisoned people’s minds (definitely not just a Russian problem).

Best other stuff seen: I’ve seen some good stuff this year – I was thinking that this was the year that gigs etc. started opening up again but now I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw more stuff last year as I was more solidly in the UK and e.g. saw a load of stuff at the Fringe, as well as going to Aberystwyth Comedy Festival with Clare. I think my single favourite thing I saw in 2022 was Elf Lyons’s Raven at the Fringe – I have loved Elf Lyons since Clare and I saw her perform Swan in Machynlleth in 2018, and I feel a faint sense of ownership over her as she is probably the only comedian I did not directly discover through Clare. I also really loved Godot is a Woman, which I saw with Clare and Nuala at the Fringe, and which was a surprisingly joyful look at the Beckett Estate’s refusal to license performances of Waiting for Godot performed by Not-Men.

 

Honourable mention goes to the performance of Rigoletto that I saw in Bucharest, which was very good in its own right but was also particularly memorable because partway through the third act this terrifying chiming noise started coming from all over the auditorium and I had a panicky minute or two of wondering whether Russia was invading Romania, only to discover that the Romanian telecommunications network has a system where they will send severe weather warnings to your phone that override it being on silent, and what I was hearing was every single phone in that auditorium going off within about two minutes.

 

OH GOD last minute addition: while down in Wales my aunt and her sister took me along to an incredibly bizarre event in a stately home where a man channelled Metatron and … put him into a piano? It was very odd but it also involved listening to an incredibly talented Slovenian concert pianist play a Steinway in a small and intimate setting, which was gorgeous.

Best things bought: Books and travel, books and travel! However honourable mention goes to the incredible Stella McCartney dress I bought, ostensibly for my book launch: it was 75% off (though still, obviously, absurdly expensive) and there was only one left and it was in my size, so it felt like it was meant to be. Then it arrived and I had a crisis of faith and decided that I didn’t have the confidence to wear it after all, so planned to wear my fall-back option instead, and THEN on the day itself it was absolutely fucking boiling and I ended up wearing neither as it was too hot. I had every intention of sending it back but the combined urging of Jo and Clare has resulted in me keeping it and it cheers me up whenever I look at it (from August, when it arrived, until October, which was the last time I was in my flat, it was hanging on the living room door, though it is conceivable that my lodgers have sensibly moved it since). I am very glad I kept it but also not sure when I will ever actually wear it, as it’s very much the sort of dress that draws focus and so I couldn’t wear it to anyone else’s event. Perhaps I will have to go big for my 45^th birthday, next year.

 

I have also continued to accumulate perfumes, including Zoologist’s Bee and Perris Monte Carlo’s Santal Pacifique and BASM’s Buzduganul Fermecat, and I got Encelade by Marc-Antoine Barrois for Christmas, as well as a sample of Frederic Malle’s Portrait of a Lady, which I have every intention of buying next year because it is lush. This is an extremely self-indulgent habit but also I love it so so much.

Things lost: Compared to the last couple of years it feels like I have backslid on this, but otoh I am back to pre-2020 levels of travel and related overwhelm and that is when practical concerns like keeping track of my possessions simply fall out of my head. In September I lost my excellent ‘sgoinneil’ water bottle and a stupidly expensive hoodie that I had bought mere days before while travelling from Guatemala to Mexico; in October I left my raincoat and a pair of jeans in a cupboard in a hotel (classic out-of-sight, out-of-mind ADHD object impermanence). On my last full day in Lebanon I left my phone in an uber; I realised almost immediately but attempts to get it back failed so I mentally bade it goodbye, but a couple of days later the uber driver contacted my colleague whose number I’d left, and so now my phone is waiting for me with my colleague in Beirut.

 

People who follow me on Twitter will already know my most iconic loss of 2022: a few weeks ago I got home to my building in Beirut to find that I had lost the keys to the airbnb. Turned my bag upside down, video called a colleague who was still at the office, keys were nowhere so I assumed they’d fallen out of my pocket in an uber. Contacted the airbnb people and it turned out the only spare set of keys were with someone two hours out of Beirut. So I went to a hotel for the night, arranged to meet the airbnb people the next morning to collect the spare set. Got back to the building the next morning, went up to the apartment … and found the keys hanging in the door, where they had evidently been for the past 24 hours. THANKFULLY I got there before the airbnb people so I could secrete the keys upon my person, and then I fake-found them at work later that day. Fucking SIGH.

The music of 2022:  Same as ever, downbeat sad-boy/girl-with-guitar indie folk, with occasional exceptions, such as Moldova’s epic Eurovision entry, Trenuletul, which is an absolute banger.

 

I’ve also started making thematic playlists on Spotify, generally linked to specific countries or styles of music, which has been a really nice way of broadening my listening.

Fashion concept (such as it is): I continue to move gradually away from overt femininity and towards more androgynous looks. In September I got a few pairs of high-waisted tailored trousers in the Cos sale and started wearing them with trainers and button-down shirts, which I dubbed Soft Butch Autumn. If you had told me ten years ago that trousers and button-down shirts would be an integral part of my wardrobe I would not have believed it.

Global happenings and politics: Obviously the war in Ukraine has been the big one this year – for everyone, I’m sure, but particularly for people who work in the humanitarian sector, maybe. I’ve always been aware that humanitarian aid is deeply politically driven, and at its core pretty racist, but it’s still been a fairly major kick in the crotch to see that play out in real time. The empathy and compassion that the world has shown for Ukrainians has been lovely, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but that empathy and compassion is deserved by Afghans and Syrians and Iraqis and South Sudanese and Rohingya and Somalis and Yemenis and and and, and it’s honestly been really fucking gross to see the enormous amounts of resources diverted towards Ukraine from other countries that are in equally or more dire need. For the first few months I was working in Romania I kept doing the mental maths of what tiny fraction of our gigantic operating budget (for, at most, 85k Ukrainian refugees) would have been needed to keep my former education programme in the Rohingya IDP camps going, and pretty much all of my colleagues were similarly shellshocked by it, people who’d been responsible for shutting down programmes in places like Tigray or Yemen due to lack of funds, and then suddenly there we were in a highly-developed EU country dealing with refugees from another highly-developed country, with an enormous and ever-growing budget that we were struggling to spend. I don’t want to become too cynical, and for all the criticisms of the aid industry I think it’s better that it exists than the alternative (and, selfishly, I don’t know what I’d do for a job if not this), but I do think it’s the responsibility of organisations like SCI to do more to push back against donors and lobby for funds to be diverted and yet I know it will never happen because these orgs will always take Money over No Money because they’ve got to pay for HQ somehow. UGH.

 

Ukraine aside, every year I do this I think that the political situation in the UK can’t get any worse AND YET. Who’d have thought at the start of 2022 that we’d go through two heads of state and three heads of government and have absolutely fucking zero choice in any of them? The Liz Truss fiasco is mostly just funny aside from the fact that she and her cronies crashed an entire currency, but weirdly the thing that pisses me off even more is that we’ve got a fucking KING now, and that, apparently, is just how it’s fucking done and most people on this benighted landmass remain in favour of it? I’ve long been of the belief that the fact that we have a hereditary head of state is the root of many of the psychic ills in this ridiculous country and I feel it all the more now; it is just LUDICROUS that we have a monarchy, I hate it so much, it’s never going to change, set everything on fucking fire.

Things never done before: Got COVID! Went on a yoga retreat! Swam and dived in a cenote! Visited Central America! Went paragliding towed behind a car (rather than jumping off a mountain)! Led a training on psychological first aid! Bought a couture dress! Had a fucking king.

Highlights of 2022:

 

-       start of the year with Clare in Aviemore: Highland Wildlife Park, weird woodland sculptures, tubing in Cairngorm with a load of children, the world’s largest hedges

-       Various outings in Glasgow: Drag Opticon, cocktail evenings with friends, Rural Life Museum with Clare and Emma

-       A month with my parents in Jan/Feb while my mum was having her hip replacement – very difficult at times but glad I was able to be there to help

-       Some lovely big winter walks at my parents’ place

-       Outing to Balloch with Lisa, watching Ness her dog swim in the loch

-       Flying visit to Haarlem while on a ridiculous layover in Amsterdam on my way to Madagascar

-       MADAGASCAR! Exploring Tana and eating surprisingly delicious food; hanging out with lemurs and chameleons in various national parks; diving in Ifaty and being massaged by ladies on the beach; BAT CAVE and Tsingy Rouge in the north, Amber Mountain and the views down to Diego Suarez

-       Getting to know Romania: torchlit military parade, midnight candles on Easter, trips to the various borders with Ukraine, opera and art galleries, nights out with my lovely team, lavender festival in Maramures

-       Work trip to Moldova, getting stocked up on hazelnut Snickers again and enjoying Chisinau in the springtime

-       Clare’s visit to Romania, and our flying visit to Brasov, including the bear sanctuary (where we became co-bearants to a bear with many challenges who died mere months later) and Bran Castle, where I did a dramatic reading from Dracula Daily

-       Team Up training in Iasi, including patricipants who’d heroically crossed the border from Ukraine, and totally unexpected paragliding opportunity in the middle of the Romanian countryside

-       Serbia with Clare: exploring Belgrade, Tito Mausoleum, Erwin Wurm exhibit, river cruise, day trip to go on a steam train in the mountains!

-       What was supposed to be a couple of weeks back in Scotland in early July, summer picnics, Highland walks, seeing various friends in various places

-       Unexpected extended stay in the UK in July/August after my Romanian visa didn’t come through, meaning that I got more time with friends and family and I got to do Fringe stuff and other nice things

-       London BOOK LAUNCH, seeing loads of lovely people I hadn’t seen in years and years, and other nice London things around it, including a ridiculously drunken evening with Leda and David, and a visit to Dopamine Land with Clare and Kat

-       Followed by an absolutely scorchio weekend in Folkestone, staying with Angela and Andrew

-       A week back in Romania, to use up the last few days I could be there visa-free, and a final side-trip to Sinaia

-       AMAZING week with Kat in Mykonos, three hours of yoga every day, delicious food in restaurants around the island, a day trip to Delos with the most charming local guide, gloriously expansive breakfasts in our very fancy hotel

-       One day in Cancun with my old uni friend Paul and his new family, lunch and cocktails on the beach

-       A week on my own in Guatemala, visiting places I’d been wanting to see since I was 18: climbed a volcano, went to Chichicastenango for market day, stayed on Lake Atitlan, wandered the ruins of Antigua. SO good

-       A week in Mexico with Clare and Dash: visiting Uxmal in the early morning when no one was there; tamarind margaritas; drinking beer in our Merida plunge pool; Mayan food and a ruined pyramid in Izamal; swimming in a cenote and diving in another cenote; ridiculous penthouse in the jungle in Tulum

-       Final couple of nights on my own in Holbox, getting a surprise tattoo, eating ceviche and drinking cocktails in the beach, swimming in bioluminescence

-       Clare’s visit to Lebanon: Beit Beirut; weekend trip to Tripoli and particularly the amazing concrete dome in the Rachid Karami International Fair

-       Work trip to the learning centre in Syr, and then sidetrip to the top of a mountain with colleagues

-       Solo trips to Byblos, Tyre, Aanjar and Baalbek – particularly the latter, where I stayed in a near-empty hotel and was served sumptuous breakfasts on wheeled tray

-       Yoga classes in Beirut! Constantly surprised at how much pure delight I get from this

-       Christmas in Wales with family, and ending the year with Glasgow pals

Lowlights of 2022:

 

-       Antarctica and Atlantic cruises being cancelled AGAIN – though in hindsight I do think we will have a better experience going this year than we would have had in 2022

-       Fucking KLM permanently losing my suitcase on my way to Romania

-       Terrifying tarantula experience in Madagascar, though tbf I have dined out on that story for months so it’s probably more of a good experience than a bad one

-       Some sad family stuff, let’s not discuss it, aside from the fact that I wrote a para about it up there ^^

-       The world being a total fucking trashfire

-       The goddamn motherfucking Tories, who deserve to burn in hell for all eternity

-       Getting COVID at last

-       A couple of really terribly hangovers. Maybe I should finally give up drinking

-       Horrible ear infection in October

-       Extremely intense work angst in Lebanon

Resolutions / intentions kept: I didn’t make any last year, on the basis that new job and new book being published were more than enough to be getting on with. And I think I was right.

Intentions for 2023: I think I’m going to stick to not making any, thanks. There are a few things that I would like to do/change/achieve but I find it generally works better through daily habits and smaller-scale goal setting than through big-picture resolutions. I feel like I’ve really settled into myself in my forties, which entails a combination of knowing that I am very capable of growth and change, while also knowing the parts of my personality that are fixed, and that makes it much easier to just … I guess … do the things that I know I want to do and which make me happy,* and let go of the rest.

 

*Crashing exception here is anything to do with dating and relationships, let’s not discuss it, I go back and forth on where the line is between pathology and preference and new year’s day is no time to relitigate it.

Edit: Oh yeah I forgot to link all previous years, and now I can't be arsed because I have been on LJ/DW since the dawn of fucking time and it will take a million years, but here is a link to last year's round-up, from which all others are linked, in case anyone bafflingly cares.